see these scars across my chest,
I was pushed off a roof,
by accident…
I don’t blame them,
to this day, I cannot blame them,
poor armadillo, didn’t see me coming…
curved glass blocks in my cozy apartment building
overlooking silicon prairie,
sputnik was in ’57 not ’58…
but now it’s 1983
and the speak and spell says your name
move your finger left?
move your finger right?
move your spirit up? okayyyy
oh, no matter,
I’ll still take my trip across the country
in search of answers,
on my quest
for the thing
that gets you
to the thing
you know, I just couldn’t
stop thinking about that thing
you wrote, how brilliant it was,
how revolutionary of an idea it was,
you’re a trailblazer,
ahead of your time, and you don’t
even…know…it…
just listen to me, okay,
if you let them, they’ll chase you
off the ledge too, they’ll chase
us all off the ledge, all of us
we’ve all lost something!
all of us losers…
we are all losers after all…
does experience make you great?
does failure and loss push you
toward the threshold of success?
what’s it like to bear the burden
of being some kind of misunderstood genius?
well, here we are…now…
in the parking lot
a little after midnight
and YOU:
everything about you THREATENS
PEOPLE…
listen, we ARE the unreasonable people
and progress depends on us
changing the world
to fit us — not the other way around
so I will keep going…
because I know you need this as much as I do,
so…join…me
Garbage Notes:
This poem was inspired by the first two episodes of one of my favorite TV shows, Halt and Catch Fire, which portrays a fictionalized version of the computer revolution of the 1980s and early 90s.
At the time when I wrote this poem I was doing a little re-watch and I couldn’t help but jot down some notes, ideas, imagery, and bits of dialogue that stood out to me — so yeah, that’s the majority of what ultimately coalesced into this piece.
The interesting thing about re-watching a show you’ve already seen one or two times over is that you start to notice peripheral things that add or enhance the message of the show itself. For instance there were two songs on the soundtrack that stood out to me.
In the first episode it was Complicated Game by XTC, particularly the following lyrics, which I riffed on a little bit in my poem:
I ask myself, "should I put my finger to the left?"
No
I ask myself, "should I put my finger to the right?"
No
Does it really matter where I put my finger?
Someone else will come along and move it
The theme of individual control and autonomy really stands out, and how our actions tend to get drowned out by all the complicated events and contextual intricacies that take place around us.
Another song that I had never noticed before but became a real earworm after my re-watch was Germfree Adolescence by X-Ray Spex. It fits the mood of the show perfectly. But in particular it goes exceptionally well with the scene that it’s in as Mackenzie Davis’ character Cameron dances to it in the Cardiff Electric office in the middle of the night.
On the surface the song is about being afraid of germs, but if you reflect on it a little, you realize it’s even more relatable than that—it’s about our fear of intimacy. Of genuinely coming into contact with other people and their deeply flawed ugliness.
A real undercurrent in this show is what happens when smart people who have a whole lot of baggage to their personalities brush up against one another. It’s about what happens when difficult or unreasonable people are forced to work together. More than that, though, it’s about what it’s like to find yourself lost in the intimate depths of another messed-up human being.
As creative individuals, we are all unreasonable people. I know I certainly feel like one. Crazy enough to go after the things you want. Crazy enough to think you can put your stamp on the world.
To think some ideas are powerful enough to move the masses. Well, who knows. There’s a hopefulness to this poem amidst the dark and brutal imagery. You never know what will be the thing that gets you to the thing that gets you where you need to be. So keep on going. Always.
Franco Amati 2024
If you enjoyed this piece, a paid subscription would be the best way to show your support. But if you aren’t ready for that sort of commitment yet, you can always send me a one-time donation on my Ko-fi page.
I thought this poem was about me, I was born in 1983... Then when I read the explanation about being inspired by Halt and Catch Fire— I became even more convinced that it was about me! What a wonderful show about friends that made me weep more times than I can remember!
This line: everything about you THREATENS
PEOPLE… jumps because we are conditioned to conform to bullshit, and refusing to conform is choosing to be an individual, which if you’re a US citizen is a right: to constructively be who and whatever the hell you wish. Not sure when or why being ones damn self became a threat, but it’s saddening to live through the end of the Age of Enlightenment, to watch as humans are regressing as technology progresses.